1. Field
The present invention relates generally to surveillance systems and, more specifically, to surveillance systems for installations of fluid-handling devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
Fluid-handling devices, such as valves, pumps, and various other forms of process equipment, in many use cases, are widely geographically distributed. For example, when such devices are used to extract petroleum products from an oil well, the associated fluid source or receptacle may be in a relatively remote location, as oil wells are generally distributed relative to one another and located remote from metropolitan areas. Similar issues arise in relation to petro-water disposal facilities, re-injection facilities, and petroleum pumping stations, all of which tend to be geographically distributed and include fluid-handling equipment.
Such facilities, and others, like construction sites, are often not visually monitored to the extent owners and managers would prefer. Visual monitoring is useful for a variety of reasons. For example, expensive equipment at geographically distributed sites is often stolen or vandalized. Further, remote project managers often struggle to monitor and coordinate the activities of workers at geographically distributed sites without being physical present themselves.
Conventional mobile surveillance units are often not well suited for monitoring these sites due to cost and performance. In many use cases, such units are only needed for a few weeks, making custom installation, system integration, and training relatively expensive on a per-site basis, as such costs are amortized over relatively short durations of time. And these issues are accentuated for geographically remote sites. For instance, often power supplies are not available on site or are expensive to connect to a surveillance unit, particularly for units needed for only a limited amount of time, as often happens with project-based work, like on construction sites or oil and gas related facilities. Further, usage is often substantially impaired by unreliable or low-bandwidth data connections between geographically remote surveillance units and users viewing video feeds. Finally, surveillance systems are often not integrated with other sources of information about the activity occurring on-site and, as a result, users often struggle to establish a complete understanding of what is happening due to the need to investigate information gathered through multiple systems.